Letter found among the papers of Lashonda Reims after her death, age 92.
I see you clearer as I begin to cast loose from this body. You stand over my bed, tall, sharp, shining. You don’t look like the fairies in movies. You fuzz my brain as if you’re something else entirely and my mind makes a fae shape to make sense of you. Your form is an illusion, a trick of the eye. You stand at my bedside and wait. I think you are required to witness my end. The end of the bargain we struck all those years ago when I was thirteen. When I called to you in my distress, desperate to believe, you answered me. I’ve been writing letters all week to my children and grandchildren. One for each, to be opened after. Fitting that the last one is for you who was there at the beginning of it all.
I want you to know that cheating you was never the point. I intended to keep the bargain when I made it. I wasn’t a clever hero tricking the fae. Nor the peasant-turned-queen who broke her bargain later, crying tears for the baby she’d promised and did not want to give up. I knew older girls who’d aborted babies. And my Mama had lost two in two years. I’d helped her clean up both times. Babies were blood and life disruption. It seemed so simple to promise my firstborn to you so Mama and I could have a house and not be hungry. I didn’t want to be rich. I wanted to always have sufficient to meet the needs of me and mine.
“Me and mine.” Those were the words of the bargain that surprised us both. You were careful in forming all the strictures of the agreement. Leaving me no loopholes, no Rumpelstiltskin escapes, no way for me to choose not to comply. It was a contract written in my hand. Bargains sealed in words on a page were stronger than those just spoken, or so you said. I signed my name, you touched the page and left a symbol. Both of us bound from that moment on, even though I lost the paper years ago. Neither of us saw the expandable nature of the deal until I hugged another woman’s child and called her mine.
Are you angry with me? I’m not sure you know how to form your face into the human shapes of anger. Will you take my soul when it is free? You shake your head at me, the barest hint of a motion, but I saw it. The bargain doesn’t work that way. It isn’t souls you need.
Why do all the fairytales speak as if cheating the fae were some great triumph, the hero so clever she can get out of the deal she made? I’ve lived my life paying what was owed, making sure that no one is poorer for my passing. The imbalance of our bargain weighs on me. It has since that day in the doctor’s office more than sixty-five years ago when he told me my uterus had to come out. Were you there as I woke from surgery? I have a memory of you standing over me as you do now. I called to you and cried for you. I think you answered my call, drawn once more to my need, you came and stood by me, but you were gone again when I woke fully.
Do you understand irony? Without the prosperity you provided, I could never have afforded the doctor in the first place. I would have died before thirty, killed by the part of me that was supposed to create life. It was already diseased before our bargain was struck. I could never fulfill my part, the one faulty piece in your beautiful bargain.
The imbalance tugged at me, but it didn’t tug at me any worse if it covered more people. I tested the limits. I couldn’t love a neighbor into being mine unless they came to live under my roof. If I brought in more people than my roof could hold, a way would come for me to get a bigger house for as long as it was needed. There were so many, and they were always better after they lived with me for a bit. The magic was stronger for them if there was a contract. Adoption was best, but fostering was almost as good. Traces of prosperity went with them when they moved on. Will that end with my death I wonder? No misfortune will come to them, that was in the bargain along with long life for me, but the prosperity flows through me, and I will soon be a collapsed gateway. In each house I made a space for you, though I never saw you visit. The children laughed at me for my little shrines, but they listened to my stories. Even the ones with grandchildren of their own will stop and listen when I tell tales.
They had a party for my 90th birthday. I’ve lost some of their names, but I know and love the faces. They are still mine for as long as I live. Not long now. What will they make of this letter I wonder. Probably think I’ve got dementia. I hope they think and remember before they judge me addled. Remember we always had enough space. Remember the money that showed up in time to buy shoes. Remember the scholarships for schooling. Remember how, when things broke, we always fixed them. All of that was the magic at work, the result of the deal I made.
I did my studies in tales of you during my later years. Went back for a masters and then a PhD in folklore. Many cultures have tricksters and makers of bargains. My children and grandchildren didn’t quite understand. “What are you going to use those degrees for?” they asked me. I told them a thing didn’t need to be useful to be worthwhile. Which is a truth, but was also incomplete. I was seeking to know what you need, why you made the bargain with me in the first place, why you sought out a baby. If I knew what you needed, I could fulfill the heart of the bargain if not the actual words of it.
A decade ago (or was it two?) I had the first inkling. I was telling stories to the littles. Their eyes were bright with wonder and belief. They listened to my fairy stories then ran out to the garden to find you. Older children wanted the wilder, more dangerous tales. They sought you in the dark places: caves, thickets, basements. I followed them in their search and saw signs of you, flashes in the corners of my eyes which vanished when I turned. They were calling you as I once did, though their need wasn’t desperate enough to summon you fully. Yet you were there, sustained by their belief.
J.M. Barrie had it right in Peter Pan. Fae thrive on human belief. It is the source of your power. You wanted a child so you would have a constant stream of belief. After that, I told the stories as often as I could, hoping that if I could pass on belief, perhaps that would balance our deal.
Now I think I was the child you wanted. Me, caught in a space between childhood and adulthood, living in chaos and needing stability. I was reaching, calling, and you answered. With our bargain, you purchased almost eighty years of belief. I give you that gladly. I also give you the stories I told to my children and grandchildren. Belief faded in most of them, but for a time they nourished you. Now I give you this letter, partly addressed to you, partly addressed to those of mine who may read it and reconsider how our lives were benefited by the bargain I made. Let this letter be a new contract to extend that bargain past my ending. So long as those I counted as mine are willing to hold belief, to offer you a small shrine in their homes or gardens, or are at least willing to hold the possibility of you, they may continue to prosper. This new bargain tends to them and to you. It is the best legacy I have to bequeath. You give the slightest nod I think. Barely a motion, so I end this letter. Let all who believe prosper.
At the end of the letter next to Lashonda’s signature there is a swirling symbol that appears to be part of the paper itself. Bargain accepted.
Sandra Tayler is a writer, editor, and publisher with credits in over thirty different titles. Her most recent work, Structuring Life to Support Creativity, will be crowdfunding in late spring of 2024. Sandra’s blog One Cobble at a Time won an Association of Mormon Letters Award in 2009. Sandra lives in Orem with her husband, three cats, a minion, a cryptid, and a family of very demanding scrub jays who insist that Sandra’s only real job is to put peanuts on the deck rail. You can find Sandra online at sandratayler.com.
